The Climate Change Briefing

1. The Scientific Consensus

Wikipedia credits John Cook – the founder of the Skeptical Science website – for bringing to public attention the consensus about anthropogenic global warming in the scientific community.

Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature frequently referred to as John Cook et al. (2013) was a landmark climate research paper. The paper found that 97.1% of climate scientists supported the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). As of March 2021, the paper had received at least 1,270,076 downloads. The study was “conceived as a citizen science project by volunteers contributing to the Skeptical Science website”. 11,944 abstracts were acquired by searching the Web of Science database, with criteria such as “global warming” or “global climate change”. Volunteers then assessed each abstract and assigned it a ‘level of agreement’ – under Cook et al.’s own agreement criterion. The abstracts were randomly distributed to volunteers to rate, with only the abstract and title visible. Each abstract was assessed by two raters.

Skeptical Science’s stated mission is to “get skeptical about global warming skepticism”. But as Wikipedia itself notes the 97 percent claim only refers to a third of the abstracts in which the researchers expressed a view on whether human activity might contribute to global warming. What Cook et al. actually found was that of the sampled papers on climate change, only one-third of them expressed a view about its causes, and then of that subset, 97% agreed that humans were at least one cause of climate change.

In September 2013 climatologist David Legates and his colleagues published a review of the Cook paper in Science and Education journal. They demonstrated that Cook could only claim a consensus of 0.3 percent, not 97.1 percent. More detail of the Cook travesty is provided by David Friedman.

Cook’s ‘consensus’ is the product of junk science. Despite this glaring fact, Cook et al passed peer review.

In an August 2019 piece for the Guardian Dana Nuccitelli  one of the authors of Cook et al.(2013) defended the 97 percent consensus conclusion. He said:

Our analysis built upon a previous study published by Naomi Oreskes in the peer-reviewed journal Science in 2004. In her paper, which also just surpassed 1 million downloads, Oreskes examined the abstracts of 928 peer-reviewed climate papers published between 1993 and 2003. In her review, none of the abstracts disputed human-caused global warming. Not a single one out of 928.

Klaus Martin Schulte’s paper Scientific consensus on climate change? suggests Oreskes’ findings be treated with caution.

Fear of anthropogenic “global warming” can adversely affect patients’ well-being. Accordingly, the state of the scientific consensus about climate change was studied by a review of the 539 papers on “global climate change” found on the Web of Science database from January 2004 to mid-February 2007, updating research by Oreskes, who had reported that between 1993 and 2003 none of 928 scientific papers on “global climate change” had rejected the consensus that more than half of the warming of the past 50 years was likely to have been anthropogenic. In the present review, 31 papers (6% of the sample) explicitly or implicitly reject the consensus. Though Oreskes said that 75% of the papers in her former sample endorsed the consensus, fewer than half now endorse it. Only 7% do so explicitly. Only one paper refers to “catastrophic” climate change, but without offering evidence. There appears to be little evidence in the learned journals to justify the climate-change alarm that now harms patients.

Naomi Oreskes is Professor of Science at Harvard and co-author with Eric Conway of “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change” (2010).  They claim that four physicists, Robert Jastrow, William Nierenberg , Frederick Seitz and S Fred Singer are singlehandedly responsible for the entire climate sceptic movement. The book is entirely vague about how these men are supposed to have undermined a consensus which did not exist at the time.

Oreskes is a climate-change crusader and a staunch supporter of Michael Mann – the creator of the famous hockey stick graph that galvanised concern about global-warming. Their brand of activism includes trashing scientists who breach the ‘consensus’ gospel. In the 2018 ExxonMobil case her analysis was criticised in court for a lack of basic standards of scientific inquiry including reliability, validity, objectivity, generalizability and replicability.

In July 2021 she was excluded as an expert witness by Justice Irving in the defamation case brought by Mann against writers Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn. The judge noted:

When asked about the methodologies that she used in this case, Dr. Oreskes responded: “If you want me to tell you what my method is, it’s reading and thinking. We read. We read documents. And we think about them.” That is the problem, here. Reading and thinking about documents are not the types of “reliable methodologies” typical of an expert witness, which leaves the Court unable to distinguish why Dr. Oreskes is more capable than the average juror, who can also read and think about documents… Dr. Oreskes “reading and thinking” have not been peer-reviewed, have no known success rate, and cannot be replicated by other experts in her field…Dr Oreskes opinion is not derived from the scientific method and is more aptly described as a historical narrative or research compilation than scientific testimony.

In his piece for the Guardian, Nuccitelli also claims that the Cook and Oreskes groups together with the authors of five other supporting papers reinforced the findings of Cook et al. (2013) in Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming (Cook et al. 2016). According to Nuccitelli the paper demonstrated that between 90 and 100 percent of climate scientists and their peer-reviewed research agree that humans are the main cause of recent global warming.

Michelle Stirling dismisses the claims as more nonsense (Consensus Nonsensus on 97%: Science is not a Democracy 2016). She also notes the consensus claims followed an acknowledged hiatus of 15 years in global warming despite a significant rise in carbon dioxide from industrial emissions.

The Cook group suggests its consensus findings are significant because they reflect the views of the most expert of climate scientists.  However, it is widely accepted that probing the complexity of climate change requires a sophisticated interdisciplinary approach. The ‘climate scientist’ label is often misleading as a guide to expertise.

John Cook, as evidenced by Popular Technology, is not a highly credentialled scientist with a serious track record. His submission to the IPCC in 2016 gives an insight into his priorities.

Communicating the findings of climate science research is integral to raising public levels of climate literacy, which is associated with increased support for mitigation policies. A great deal of research has been conducted into effective methods of climate communication. However, less effort has been directed towards addressing the role of misinformation in undermining communication efforts and reducing climate literacy. McCright et al. (2015) found that misinformation reduces the effectiveness of climate communication efforts. Similarly, van der Linden (2016) observed that misinformation casting doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change completely neutralizes messages that communicate the consensus. The implication of this psychological research is that climate communicators need to consider the role of misinformation and design their content accordingly. This is particularly the case with the IPCC, which is a prominent target for the purveyors of misinformation. The release of the IPCC Working Group I report in September 2013 was preceded by a blitz of pre-emptive misinformation designed to undermine the IPCC report and climate science in general.

This is simply an endorsement of the censorship which has entrenched the  “97 percent consensus” and allowed the notion of perilous, human induced climate change to be peddled as a settled fact of science.

2. Climate Alarm

Paul Homewood’s booklet “A short history of climate alarm!” is a timely reminder of how frequently the public is warned of impending doom and disaster. Numerous reports in the 1970s reflected serious concern that the Earth was heading towards a new ice age. In the 80s it was welcome to ‘planet hothouse’ where temperatures would rise by up to 7 degrees in the next 30 years. In March 2000 David Viner of the University of East Anglia declared snow would become a rare sight in Britain. In 2009 Gordon Brown gave us fewer than 50 days to avert catastrophe. Between 2009 and 2020 Prince Charles issued four warnings that the planet would shortly be uninhabitable.

Homewood says:

Part of the problem may be the colossal amounts of money available for any research that can claim to be climate related, no matter how tenuous the link. It is difficult not to conclude that many of the studies on which these claims are made would never have got off the ground otherwise. And yet nobody seems to be held to account when their predictions of doom don’t materialise. Meanwhile we are still inundated with similarly absurd assertions. Only recently the UK Met Office pronounced that snow in England would soon be a thing of the past, evidently not learning from David Viner’s faux pas twenty years before.

William Happer, professor of physics at Princeton says:

A major problem has been the co-opting of climate science by politics, ambition, greed, and what seems to be a hereditary human need for a righteous cause. What better cause than saving the planet? Especially if one can get ample, secure funding at the same time? Huge amounts of money are available from governments and wealthy foundations for climate institutes and for climate-related research.”

Climatenexus, funded by Rockefeller philanthropy, illustrates the remarkable cynicism with which the climate debate is thought-policed and strangled. Its mission statement, headed “Justice, equity and climate” states:

The past year of police killings, protest, pandemic and insurrection has made the urgency of anti-racism crystal clear. Racial inequality is both a driver and symptom of climate change. To secure real justice and protect the climate, the public conversation on this existential issue must center people of color.

On this ludicrous basis Climatenexus cracks down hard on dissenters and apostates.

For some years now, Michael Shellenberger has been trading on his past credibility as an environmentalist by criticizing environmentalists, as part of a strategy to promote fossil fuels and nuclear power. His latest effort is a book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, that he’s promoted with a blog post claiming to apologize on behalf of environmentalists for the “climate scare.” In the post, which was removed from Forbes due to its self-promotional nature and then reposted in a variety of climate denial blogs, he makes a number of unsubstantiated, false and misleading claims.

To support these allegations Climatenexus relies on Climatefeedback which describes itself as “a worldwide network of scientists sorting fact from fiction in climate change media coverage. Our goal is to help readers know which news to trust.” In short, the strategy is to use an in-house ‘fact-checker’ to give gravitas to witch-hunts.

Climatediscussionnexus – “a forum for more open debate on all aspects of climate change” -investigated the allegations made by Climatenexus and found them vacuous. There was in fact considerable scientific support for Schellernberger’s views on issues ranging from wildfire trends to CO2 emissions. The more important issue was the speed at which Forbes magazine caved into the cancel mob.

What really stands out here is the justified fright people feel in challenging well-funded, culturally and politically powerful and polemically aggressive alarmism that shames, insults, fires and bullies anyone who stands in its way. Speak out and forget tenure or research grants…Bottom line: The debate on climate is conducted in a climate of fear coming from the bullying guardians of orthodoxy.

 

3. Forbidden Scholarship

Earlier this year, Eric Kaufmann of the University of London published a remarkably detailed and comprehensive study of bias in academia, “Academic Freedom in Crisis: Punishment, Political Discrimination, and Self-Censorship.”

In his review of the study, Patrick J. Michaels says Kaufmann’s finding of “rampant left-sided political bias in publication, employment, and promotion in the Academy — and discrimination against anyone right-of-center — qualifies as forbidden scholarship…The result is a systematic poisoning of the peer-reviewed literature, which society accepts as its canon of knowledge. Fewer trends in the world of ideas could be more dangerous.”

For instance, it is somewhat easy to download upper-atmospheric data from the climate models that serve as the (only) basis for assessment of future climate in the literature. These data reveal massive systematic overprediction of warming in the last 40 years for the entire four-dimensional global tropics. Yet publishing that fact in the scientific literature has proven nearly impossible. For whatever reason, it is viewed as a right-of-center finding and is treated as such. The increasing systemic bias against such findings makes paradigms even more resistant to change than they were. To belabor the point, the reigning paradigm is that these climate models supply reliable guidance for the future, but the implication of the global tropical error is that they don’t. Nonetheless, the literature either doesn’t note this or downplays its meaning. It’s hard not to see how politically consequential this is. Why viewing the planet as existentially imperiled is “left” and seeing the climate as a modestly warming metastable system is “right” is a mystery, but the ensuing discrimination is a reality. ..There is already a tremendous numerical disparity between left- and right-leaning faculty; approximately 14 to 1 in the U.S., as shown in Table 4 in Kaufmann’s paper. This is for the social sciences and the humanities; Kaufmann (personal communication) indicates the number for STEM is 5.7 to 1, still an outrageous imbalance. Kaufmann did find that discrimination by the right against the left occurs at about the same rate, but since there are so few on the right, the disparity in favor of the left will continue to grow as the papers, promotions, and grant applications of right-leaning faculty are rejected by the ever-increasing proportion on the left. Interestingly, the percentages for conservative discrimination against left-leaning faculty are the same with regard to hiring, but the left discriminates slightly more than the right in reviews of academic papers and grant applications and in promotion decisions. Because hiring decisions largely rest with the faculty members themselves, discrimination against conservatives is only going to continue increasing.

In short, a numerically superior “left” now effectively controls the debate and the “facts” that determine public policy on climate change in much the same way in which it has regimented scientific discourse on the pandemic.

 

4. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Hockey Stick

Since its establishment in 1988 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has delivered five Assessment Reports, “the most comprehensive scientific reports about climate change produced worldwide.” The latest report AR6 warns that prolonged warming even beyond 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5C) could produce ‘progressively serious, centuries’ long and, in some cases, irreversible consequences. By 2050, hundreds of millions of people are likely to face famine and potentially lethal heatwaves as tipping points, from which there can be no recovery, are triggered. ‘The worst is yet to come, affecting our children’s and grandchildren’s lives much more than our own…Climate change will fundamentally reshape life on Earth in the coming decades, even if humans can tame planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.’

Despite the scientific pretension there is no reason to take the IPCC seriously. The panel was created to provide a scientific cloak for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change which has since 1992 been trying to get the world to agree to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system”.

The difficulty for the IPCC is there is little if any scientific evidence for such a threat. Unlike the UNFCCC it could not simply regard all climate change as the product of human activity by definition. And so, when the first Assessment Report (AR1) was published in 1990, the IPCC were unable to say whether the recent climate change was human-caused, natural or both.

It subsequently found ways of satisfying the UNFCCC mandate by tweaking models to produce acceptable results and by enabling IPCC authors to use their own “expert judgement” – even where they were co-authors – to  favour the findings of studies with which they agreed.  Ronan Connolly’s essay, “How the UN’s climate change panel created a “scientific consensus” on global warming” is a revealing account of how the IPCC ratchets-up climate alarm in the face of conflicting empirical evidence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The “Hockey Stick” is the graph that stormed the world of science back in 1998. That’s when Michael Mann and co-authors Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes published in Nature their seminal paper “Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries.” A subsequent 1999 update by the same authors, also in Nature (Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations) extended their reconstructions of “temperature patterns and climate forcing” back another 400 years to about the year 1000. The graph showed world temperatures essentially flat or slightly declining for 900+ years (the shaft of the hockey stick), and then shooting up dramatically during the 20th century era of human carbon dioxide emissions (the blade of the stick).

At face value the Hockey Stick graph reveals the existential threat humanity faces from global warming. It provided sensational support for the climate change mitigation policies that the UNFCCC was relentlessly attempting to foist upon the world. It therefore dominated AR3. It was also timely. The cover story – sulphate cooling – used in AR2(1995) to endorse anthropogenic global warming was falling apart.

Christopher Monkton (Hockey Stick? What Hockey Stick) describes the systematically dishonest way the “hockey-stick” graph falsely showing that today’s temperatures are warmer than those that prevailed during the medieval climate optimum was fabricated in 1998/9, adopted as the poster child of climate panic by the IPCC in its 2001 climate assessment (AR3), and then retained in its 2007 assessment report (AR4) despite having been demolished in the scientific literature.

It was fabricated by ignoring, undervaluing, or even suppressing proxies for northern-hemisphere temperature that did not suit the result the authors wanted; by falsely stating that they had used data they had in fact replaced with “estimates” of their own that gave them a less inconvenient answer; by overvaluing by many orders of magnitude the contribution of datasets that suited the result they wanted. It was worse still that the IPCC, several leading journals and numerous former co-authors of the three fabricators of the hockey stick should have continued to cling to it as though it were Gospel even though it has been justifiably and utterly discredited in the scientific literature, and should have gone through an elaborate pantomime of rewriting and publishing previously-rejected papers with the connivance of a dishonest journal editor, so that an entirely fictitious scientific support for the false graph could be  claimed by the IPCC in its current Fourth Assessment Report (2007).

Below: The IPCC’s infamous and now-discredited “hockey-stick” graph – as it appeared in AR3 (2001) – that falsely abolished the medieval warm period and enhanced by at least half the true temperature increase since 1980, giving the misleading impression that temperatures in the latter half of the 20th century were unprecedented in the recent history of the Earth. In fact, temperatures were warmer than the present for almost two-thirds of the past 10,000 years – most recently during the “medieval climate optimum”, a warm period from about 950 to 1350 A.D. The “hockey stick” appeared in the IPCC’s 2001 assessment report six times, and in full colour, the only graph to be so favoured. The graph was not based on science. It was a political statement.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above: The bright pink plus the dotted line in between the two pink portions shows one of the data series used in the construction of the Hockey Stick graph. The pink portions were simply deleted to produce the flamboyant and incendiary Hockey Stick when the graph was presented.

Following AR3 (2001) several major critical studies of the Hockey Stick were published. New paleoclimate reconstructions also established there had been a Warm Medieval Period. The IPCC grudgingly admitted the Hockey Stick was probably too flat but did not recant. Instead for AR4 (2007) they used models to produce ‘evidence’ to sustain the climate hysteria inspired by the Hockey Stick.

In November 2009 the publication of emails hacked from the Climatic Unit at the University of East Anglia clearly revealed that senior scientists working for the IPCC had colluded with the authors of the Hockey Stick paper in the fabrication of climate alarmism’s most visible icon.

In their December 2019 paper, CLIMATEGATE Untangling Myth and Reality Ten Years Later, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick who played a key role in exposing the Hockey Stick deception show why the revelations made little difference to the IPCC. The investigations on both sides of the Atlantic were always intended to whitewash the muck.

And so, in the publication of AR5 in 2013 the IPCC continued its practice of cherry-picking the data to model the desired results. Expert judgment dismissed the evidence of solar warming from other, off-message, sources so that the IPCC could claim: “It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.

5. Judith Curry

Professor Curry is the former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Studies at the Georgia institute of technology. She epitomizes the struggle of ethical scientists to resist an increasingly harsh and punitive orthodoxy. In 2017 she finally resigned. The following notes from her debate with Michael Mann eloquently  frame the issues that have reduced much of climate science to dogma.

Agreement/disagreement

There is widespread agreement on these basic tenets:

• Surface temperatures have increased since 1880
• Humans are adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere
• Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have a warming effect on the planet

However, there is substantial disagreement about the issues of greatest consequence:

• Whether the recent warming has been dominated by human causes
• How much the planet will warm in the 21^stcentury
• Whether warming is ‘dangerous’
• How we should respond to the warming

I have bolded the two issues that are the focus of this conversation. Now there is nothing wrong or bad about scientific disagreement.  In fact, the scientific process thrives in the face of disagreement, which motivates research in new directions.

Disagreement: causes of climate change

On the left-hand side is the perspective of a stable climate that changes in response to changes in atmospheric CO2.  In other words, carbon dioxide as the climate control knob.  It’s a simple and seductive idea.

However some scientists think that this is a misleading oversimplification.  They regard climate as a complex nonlinear dynamical system, with no simple cause and effect.  Climate can shift naturally in unexpected ways, owing to natural internal variability associated with large-scale ocean circulations.

 Elephant

Now these two perspectives are not mutually exclusive. Proponents of the CO₂as control knob idea acknowledge the existence of natural variability but dismiss it as noise that averages out.  Proponents of the natural variability arguments acknowledge the impact of CO2 but consider it to be a modest wedge that projects onto the natural modes of climate variability. The point of this cartoon is that if you only look at one part of the elephant, you will misdiagnose.  You need to look at the entire elephant.

The bottom line is that we don’t yet have a unified theory of climate variability and change that integrates all this.

 Disagreement: cause of climate change

So, does this rather arcane scientific debate actually matter?  Well, yes it does.

If you assume that carbon dioxide is the control knob for climate, then you can control climate by reducing CO₂emissions. If you assume that climate change primarily occurs naturally, then the Earth’s climate is largely uncontrollable, and reducing CO₂emissions will do little or nothing to change the climate.

My personal assessment aligns with the right-hand side, emphasizing natural variability.  However, the IPCC and the so-called consensus aligns with the left- hand side.

About 10 years ago, I also aligned with left hand side, because I thought supporting the IPCC consensus was the responsible thing to do. Here is how and why I changed my mind.

 Policy cart before scientific horse

In 2010, I started digging deeper, both into the science itself and the politics that were shaping the science.  I came to realize that the policy cart was way out in front of the scientific horse.

The 1992 UN Climate Change treaty was signed by 190 countries before the balance of scientific evidence suggested even a discernible human influence on global climate.  The 1997 Kyoto Protocol was implemented before we had any confidence that most of the warming was caused by humans.  There was tremendous political pressure on the IPCC scientists to present findings that would support these treaties, which resulted in a manufactured consensus.

You find what you shine a light on

Here is how the so-called consensus and increasing confidence in human-caused global warming became a self-fulfilling prophesy. You find what you shine a light on.  In other words, we have only been looking at one part of the elephant.

Motivated by the UN Climate treaty and the IPCC and government funding, climate scientists have focused primarily on human-caused climate change.  Other factors important for understanding climate variability and change have been relatively neglected. I have highlighted long-term ocean oscillations and solar indirect effects, since I think that these are potentially very important on decadal to century timescales.

 The sea level rise alarm

One of the most consequential impacts of a warming climate is sea level rise. These two statements by climate scientists typify the alarm over sea level rise:

Is this alarm justified by the scientific evidence?

Is CO2 the control knob for global sea level rise?

This figure illustrates the challenge of attributing long-term sea level rise to CO₂emissions. The blue curve shows sea level change since 1800, measured from tide gauges.

The red curve shows global emissions of carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels. You can see that global sea levels were rising steadily long before fossil fuels emissions became substantial. You can also see that the steep increase in emissions following 1950 is associated with very little sea level rise between 1950 and 1990.

An uptick in sea level rise occurred in the 1990’s, which is circled.  Let’s take a closer look to see what is causing this.

What is causing recent sea level rise?

Since 1993, global satellite data have provided valuable information about sea level variations and glacier mass balance.  This figure shows a recent analysis of the budget of sea level rise since 1993.  You can see that over-all, the rate of sea level rise has increased since 1993.

What is causing this increase?  The turquoise region on the bottom of the diagram relates directly to expansion from warming.  You actually see a decrease until about 2009, which has been attributed to the cooling impact following the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1992.

What stands out as causing the increase in the rate of sea level rise is the growing contribution from Greenland, which is the dark blue area on top.  Hence the recent increase in the rate of sea level rise is caused by Greenland melting.

Variations in Greenland glacier mass balance

So, is the Greenland melting caused by increasing CO2 emissions?

This figure shows the Greenland mass balance for the 20th century. Ice sheet mass balance is defined as increase from snowfall, minus the decrease from melting.  You can see the negative mass balance values after 1995, reflecting mass loss that raises sea level.  If you look earlier in the record, you see even larger negative values particularly in the 1920’s and 1930’s.  Clearly, the high surface mass loss rates of recent years are not unprecedented, even in the 20^thcentury.

Greenland was anomalously warm in the 1930’s and 1940’s. What caused this?

The bottom figure shows variations in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which is an important mode of natural internal climate variability.  The AMO is a powerful control on the climate of Greenland.

In general, years with positive AMO index are associated with a mass loss for Greenland, whereas negative AMO index is associated with a mass gain.

IPCC AR5 quotes on sea level rise

From this analysis, I can only conclude that CO2 emissions are not the main cause of sea level rise since the mid 19^thcentury.

The scientific evidence that I’ve shown you on the preceding slides is well known to the IPCC.  Here are some statements that the most recent IPCC report made on sea level change and Greenland.

To what extent are man-made CO2 emissions contributing to climate change?

The short answer is: ‘we don’t know.’ The reason is that we don’t know how to disentangle natural internal variability from the effects of CO₂–driven warming. Even the IPCC doesn’t claim to know exactly. The most recent IPCC assessment report says it is ‘extremely likely’ to be ‘more than half.’ ‘More than half’ is not very precise.

Given the IPCC’s neglect of multi-decadal and longer time scales of natural internal variability, I regard the extreme confidence of their conclusion to be unjustified

So here is my personal assessment, using the jargon of the IPCC:  Man-made CO₂ emissions are as likely as not to contribute less than 50% of the recent warming

Should we reduce emissions to prevent warming?

 Even if you believe the climate model projections, there is still genuine disagreement regarding whether a rapid acceleration away from fossil fuels is the appropriate policy response.

One side argues that reducing CO₂emissions are critical for preventing future dangerous warming of the climate.  The other side argues that any reduction in warming would be minimal and at high cost, and that the ‘cure’ could be worse than the ‘disease’.

Climate pragmatism

What makes most sense to me is Climate Pragmatism, which has been formulated by the Hartwell group.  Climate pragmatism has 3 pillars:

• Accelerate energy innovation
• Build resilience to extreme weather
• No regrets pollution reduction

These policies provide near-term socioeconomic & environmental benefits and have justifications independent of climate mitigation & adaptation

These are no regrets policies that do not require agreement about climate science or the risks of uncontrolled greenhouse gases’

 Madhouse effect

I would like to make a few comments on the state of the scientific and public debate on climate change.

Here is my take on the Madhouse effect.  The madhouse that concerns me is one that has been created by climate scientists.  The madhouse is characterized by

• Rampant overconfidence in an overly simplistic theory of climate change
• Enforcement of a politically-motivated, manufactured ‘consensus’
• Attempts to stifle scientific and policy debates
• Activism and advocacy for their preferred politics and policy
• Self-promotion and ‘cashing in’
• Public attacks on other scientists that do not support the ‘consensus’.

Judith Curry was forced to resign a tenured faculty position because of political pressure.

6. The IPCC’s Temperature Ceiling

“Off Target”, a recent paper by Robert Murphy and Ross McKitrick found that the IPCC’s 1.5C ceiling was not supported by the economics literature. Meeting this condition would be so costly it would be better for governments to do nothing at all rather than enforce such a draconian limit. The UN special report which lays out the ostensible scientific rationale for the 1.5C target does not even argue that the benefits outweigh the costs. They advise policymakers and the public to be wary of aggressively pursuing a target whose goals have been derived politically and not scientifically.

In a semi-empirical assessment Connolly et al. attempted to answer the question “How much human-caused global warming should we expect with business-as-usual climate policies? In essence, that depended on the answers to four separate questions:

• What would future greenhouse gas emissions be over the coming century under “Business-As-Usual” conditions?
• For each of the greenhouse gases, what is the relationship between emissions and actual changes in atmospheric concentrations?
• How different would global average temperatures be at present if greenhouse gases were still at “pre-industrial concentrations”? In other words, how do we define the “pre-industrial levels” of global average temperatures to which the Paris Agreement refers?
• How “sensitive” are global average temperatures to increases in the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases?

The politicians who negotiated the Paris Agreement were not aware of this debate and (mistakenly) assumed that each of these questions had already been largely resolved and all that was needed was to establish how much “global warming” was “too much”. We find that the Paris Agreement doesn’t have any practical meaning in terms of actual climate change. Rather, it is an arbitrary paper exercise over hypothetical numbers that don’t reflect the current scientific opinions on climate change. For instance, depending on which scientific studies you base your analysis on, the Paris Agreement could plausibly be kept without any governments doing anything different from business-as-usual until the 22^nd century or later.

7. Climate Realism

In June 2021, Benjamin Zycher of the American Enterprise Institute urged conservatives to engage with climate science. He made the following points usually raised by realists in climate change debate.

The basic theory of anthropogenic” change is straightforward and undisputed: Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, emitted in part through the burning of fossil fuels, absorb some heat that would otherwise escape from the Earth’s atmosphere into space, raising temperatures in the troposphere (the lowest atmospheric layer) and at the Earth’s surface.

The impact of this ‘radiative forcing’ depends on the sensitivity of the earth’s climate system which in influenced by a range of other factors. Shifts in ocean circulation patterns and solar activity are just two examples.

The concept of a global surface temperature — averaged across dispersed measurement stations – is more problematic than is commonly recognized.

The earth has been warming in phases since the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850. Beginning in 1979, satellite measurements for the entire troposphere show a rise of about 0.17 degrees Celsius per decade, and for the troposphere over the tropics, of about 0.13 degrees Celsius per decade. A period of warming, 1910-1945, cannot be explained by higher greenhouse gas concentrations.

There is a paucity of research into natural mechanisms of warming. The IPCC’s computerised models are based on estimated anthropogenic emissions.

There is no observable upward trend in the number of “hot” days between 1895 and 2017; 11 of the 12 years with the highest number of such days occurred before 1960. Since 2005, data from the U.S. Climate Reference Network show no increase in average temperatures over the available 2005-2020 period. In addition, a recent reconstruction of global temperatures over the past 1 million years — created using data from ice-sheet formations — shows that there is nothing unusual about the current warm period.

Satellite measurements of sea levels began in 1992 and show a sea-level rise of about 3.2 mm per year between 1993 and 2010. Before 1992, when sea levels were measured with tidal gauges, the data showed an increase of about 1.7 mm per year on average from 1901 to 1990.

Since 1979, relative to the 30-year average, Arctic sea-ice has declined while Antarctic sea-ice has grown. The global sea-ice total has remained roughly constant.

Available data do not support a causal link between greenhouse-gas accumulation, temperature change, and extreme weather events and conditions.

U.S. tornado activity shows either no increase or a downward trend since 1954. Data on tropical storms, hurricanes, and accumulated cyclone energy reveal little change since satellite measurements of the phenomena began in the early 1970s. The number of wildfires in the United States shows no upward trend since 1985, and global acreage burned has declined over past decades. The Palmer Drought Severity Index shows no trend since 1895.

Dire predictions about prospective climate phenomena are almost always generated by climate models driven by complex sets of assumptions about which there is significant dispute. These models are notorious for failing to predict already documented climate changes.

Many of the explanations for the divergence from observed reality are inconsistent with each other. All the 102 climate models incorporated into the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) — a tracking effort conducted by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — overstate past and current temperature trends by a factor of two to three, and at times even more. Predictions of an enhanced heating in the mid-troposphere over the tropics cannot be confirmed by satellite data.

The poor predictive record of mainstream climate models is exacerbated by the tendency of the IPCC and U.S. government agencies to assume highly unrealistic future increases in greenhouse-gas concentrations – over six times the average between 1985 and 2019.  The IPCC’s 2013 Fifth Assessment Report predicted worsening droughts in the future. The peer-reviewed literature reports that over the last 35 years, a substantial greening of a quarter to half the Earth has occurred, of which over two-thirds are due to carbon-dioxide fertilization.

Policies to aggressively reduce greenhouse-gas emissions are likely to have minimal effects on climate. The US government’s climate model predicts that full implementation of “net-zero” emissions will reduce global temperatures by 0.17C by 2100. The Green New Deal would have about the same effect. Achieving the “safe” levels targeted by the IPCC would require emissions cuts 600 to 1700% higher than those agreed in Paris. The costs would also be astronomical amounting roughly to a $30 a gallon tax on gasoline in the US.

 

8. A selection of sceptics.

The Heartland Institute’s mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. Many of the following sceptics are associated with the Institute.

Sterling Burnett, PhD, Research Fellow at the Heartland Institute – Jan. 9, 2017.

Climate change is real and has happened throughout history on local, regional, continent-wide, and global scales, driven by a variety of atmospheric, cosmic, geologic, and meteorological factors…at the worst, humans are having a modest effect on Earth’s climate, with the increase in carbon dioxide possibly having a net beneficial effect (due to the enhanced plant productivity resulting from higher carbon-dioxide levels) …Anthropogenic warming theorists’ climate models assume temperatures should climb alongside rising carbon-dioxide levels, yet temperatures fell from the 1940s through the 1970s, even while emissions were rising dramatically. For the past two decades, carbon-dioxide levels have continued to increase, but global satellites have recorded no significant temperature increase for 18 years…Almost all the harmful impacts predicted by climate models are failing to materialize. For instance, climate models predicted more intense hurricanes, but for nearly a decade, the United States has experienced far fewer hurricanes making landfall than the historic average, and those hurricanes that have made landfall have been no more powerful than previously experienced.

William Happer, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Physics at Princeton University and former Director of Energy Research at the US Department of Energy – Feb. 7, 2017.

Climate has been changing since the Earth was formed – some 4.5 billion years ago. Climate changes on every time scale – whether decades, centuries, or millennia.The climate of Greenland was warm enough for farming around the year 1100 A.D., but by 1500, the Little Ice Age drove Norse settlers out…But none of the climate change of the past was due to humans. The very minor warming in the past few centuries is mostly from non-human causes as well… Yes, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, but much less important than the major greenhouse gas, water vapor, H2O, and clouds. Observations, including the extended ‘hiatus’ in warming since about the year 2000 – which is poised to continue now that the El Nino warming of 2015-2016 is behind us – show that more atmospheric carbon dioxide will cause only modest warming of the Earth’s surface. Many sincere people, without the time or training to dig into the facts, have been misled by the demonization of carbon dioxide. This seems to be a recurrent feature of human history. In past centuries, some of the most educated members of society wrote learned books on how to ferret out witches and presided in trials where witches were condemned to death. There never was a threat from witches, and there is no threat from   increasing carbon dioxide.”

Patrick Moore, PhD, Chair and Chief Scientist of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. and former Director of Greenpeace International. Feb. 25, 2014.

There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years. If there were such a proof, it would be written down for all to see. No actual proof, as it is understood in science, exists…When modern life evolved over 500 million years ago, CO2 was more than 10 times higher than today, yet life flourished at this time. Then an Ice Age occurred 450 million years ago when CO2 was 10 times higher than today. There is some correlation, but little evidence, to support a direct causal relationship between CO2 and global temperature through the millennia. The fact that we had both higher temperatures and an ice age at a time when CO2 emissions were 10 times higher than they are today fundamentally contradicts the certainty that human-caused CO2 emissions are the main cause of global warming.

Willie Soon, PhD, Physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics – November 2017.

There is no quantitative evidence that varying levels of minor greenhouse gases like CO2 and CH4 have accounted for even as much as half of the reconstructed glacial-interglacial temperature changes or, more importantly, for the large variations in global ice volume on both land and sea over the past 650kyr [650,000 years]. This paper shows that changes in solar insolation [amount of solar energy hitting the earth] at climatically sensitive latitudes and zones exceed the global radiative forcings [greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere trapping solar heat] of CO2 and CH4 by severalfold…The popular notion of CO2 and CH4 radiative forcing as the predominant amplifier of glacial-interglacial phase transitions cannot be confirmed…Our basic hypothesis is that long-term climate change is driven by insolation changes, from both orbital variations and intrinsic solar magnetic luminosity variations. This implies natural warming and cooling variations.

Harrison H. Schmitt, PhD, Geologist, Honorary Associate Fellow of Engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and former US Senator and NASA Astronaut – May 8, 2013.

The cessation of observed global warming for the past decade or so has shown how exaggerated NASA’s and most other computer predictions of human-caused warming have been—and how little correlation warming has with concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. As many scientists have pointed out, variations in global temperature correlate much better with solar activity and with complicated cycles of the oceans and atmosphere. There isn’t the slightest evidence that more carbon dioxide has caused more extreme weather…The current levels of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere, approaching 400 parts per million, are low by the standards of geological and plant evolutionary history. Levels were 3,000 ppm, or more, until the Paleogene period (beginning about 65 million years ago). For most plants, and for the animals and humans that use them, more carbon dioxide, far from being a ‘pollutant’ in need of reduction, would be a benefit…We know that carbon dioxide has been a much larger fraction of the earth’s atmosphere than it is today, and the geological record shows that life flourished on land and in the oceans during those times. The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science.”

Don J. Easterbrook, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Geology at Western Washington University – June 28, 2014.

Despite no global warming in 10 years and recording setting cold in 2007-2008, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPCC) and computer modelers who believe that CO2 is the cause of global warming still predict the Earth is in store for catastrophic warming in this century…Global warming of the past century (0.8° C) is virtually insignificant when compared to the magnitude of at least 10 global climate changes in the past 15,000 years. None of these sudden global climate changes could possibly have been caused by human CO2 input to the atmosphere because they all took place long before anthropogenic CO2 emissions began. The cause of the ten earlier ‘natural’ climate changes was most likely the same as the cause of global warming from 1977 to 1998…The Pacific Ocean has a warm temperature mode and a cool temperature mode, and in the past century, has switched back forth between these two modes every 25-30 years (known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation or PDO). In 1977 the Pacific abruptly shifted from its cool mode (where it had been since about 1945) into its warm mode, and this initiated global warming from 1977 to 1998…Global warming (i.e., the warming since 1977) is over. The minute increase of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere (0.008%) was not the cause of the warming – it was a continuation of natural cycles that occurred over the past 500 years.

William Gray, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University – Apr. 7, 2010.

A high percentage of meteorologists and/or climate scientists do not agree that the climate changes we have seen are mostly manmade. Thousands of us think the larger part of the climate changes we have observed over the last century are of natural origin. I believe most of the changes that have been observed are due to multi-decadal and multi-century changes in deep global ocean currents. Such changes have yet to be properly incorporated into the global models or into most climate modelers’ thinking… Many scientists believe a slightly warmer world would be, in general, more beneficial for humanity. The small changes in climate we have seen so far and the changes we will likely see in the coming decades are not potentially dangerous. It has been noted that vegetation growth is enhanced by higher CO2 levels…The global climate models will never be able to replicate the complex global atmosphere / ocean environment and its continuing changes…We should all call out faulty science wherever we see it, including the blind belief (without any evidence beyond the faulty models) that humans are largely responsible for climate change.

Roy W. Spencer, PhD, Principal Research Scientist at the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama – Oct. 20, 2008.

We are finding satellite evidence that the climate system is much less sensitive to greenhouse gas emissions than the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) climate models suggest that it is. And if that is true, then mankind’s CO2 emissions are not strong enough to have caused the global warming we’ve seen over the last 100 years…Most of the warming could be the result of a natural cycle in cloud cover forced by a well-known mode of natural climate variability: the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). While the PDO is primarily a geographic rearrangement in atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns in the North Pacific, it is well known that such regional changes can also influence weather patterns over much larger areas…Recent satellite measurements – even though they span only 7.5 years – support the Pacific Decadal Oscillation as a potential major player in global warming and climate change.

Steven F. Hayward, PhD, FK Weyerhaeuser Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research – Mar. 15, 2010.

The models the IPCC uses for projecting a 3-to-4-degree Celsius increase in temperature all assume large positive (that is, temperature-magnifying) feedbacks from a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere…If the climate system is less sensitive to greenhouse gases than the climate campaign believes, then what is causing plainly observable changes in the climate, such as earlier arriving springs, receding glaciers, and shrinking Arctic Ocean ice caps? …The IPCC downplays theories of variations in solar activity, such as sunspot activity and gamma ray bursts, and although there is robust scientific literature on the issue, even the sceptic community is divided about whether solar activity is a primary cause of recent climate variation. Several studies of Arctic warming conclude that changes in ocean currents, cloud formation, and wind patterns in the upper atmosphere may explain the retreat of glaciers and sea ice better than greenhouse gases… Above all, if the medieval warm period was indeed as warm or warmer than today, we cannot rule out the possibility that the changes of recent decades are part of a natural rebound from the ‘Little Ice Age’ that followed the medieval warm period and ended in the 19th century.”

The range of currently contentious issues is illustrated by Everything Climate – The data and the theories. Quite clearly much requires to be resolved or rebutted.

Why Antarctica and Greenland Ice Melt is Not Serious

Writing in the journal Nature, scientists at Columbia University and the University of Victoria, British Columbia report,

The Antarctic continent has not warmed in the last seven decades, despite a monotonic increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases.” The scientists also observe that over the past several decades, “Antarctic Sea ice area has modestly expanded.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-020-00143-w

Climate Change is Causing Accelerated 21st Century Surface Warming

Most Observed Warming is Natural

Almost half of the global warming in the 21^st century is due to El Niño events

A major uncertainty in figuring out how much of recent warming has been human caused is knowing how much nature has caused. The IPCC is quite sure that nature is responsible for less than half of the warming since the mid-1900s, but some climate scientists, politicians, activists, and various green energy pundits go even further, behaving as if warming is 100% human caused.

Climate Change is Increasing the Strength and Frequency of Hurricanes

Hurricanes are Not Getting Worse

Devastating hurricanes occurred long before the invention of SUVs and coal-fired power plants. Real-world hurricane activity shows little or no impact from global warming. Even the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2018 “Interim Report” observes there is “only low confidence for the attribution of any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic influences.”

Climate Change Will Increase the Number and Severity of Tornadoes

Tornadoes are Getting Less Dangerous

Despite the lack of sufficient long-term tornado data, there is a very short period of historical data from [1850] to the present that can be analysed.  This historical tornado data, show that the number of all categories of tornadoes has been declining for the past 45 years and the number of strong tornadoes, F3 or higher, has been dramatically declining for the past 45 years.

Climate Change and Crop Production

Food Production is Growing and Safe

As global climate modestly warms, U.S. and global crop yields are setting new records almost every year. The same is true for nearly all other nations, too. Thanks in large part to longer growing seasons, fewer frost events, more precipitation, and the fertilization effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide, farmers are producing more food on less land, allowing them to feed a growing global population.

Climate Change is Causing Floods

Flooding is Not Increasing

The U.N. IPCC admits having “low confidence” in even the “sign” of any changes—in other words, it is just as likely that climate change is making floods less frequent and less severe.  Even if more flooding occurs in the future, any asserted increase in heavy precipitation would likely reduce drought frequency and severity. This is very important because drought is generally a greater climate concern than abundant precipitation.

Global Warming is Causing Cold Spells

Extreme Weather has always Occurred

Global warming does not cause an increase in the frequency or severity of cold weather events such as colder than normal winter outbreaks of “The Polar Vortex”. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports it is “very likely” that there have been fewer cold days and nights in recent decades.  The U.N. IPCC reports it is “virtually certain” that there will continue to be decreases in cold temperature extremes.

 Ocean Acidification

Seawater is Alkaline and the Changes are Miniscule and Harmless

Although climate models suggest the ocean’s surface pH has dropped from pH 8.2 to 8.1 since 1750 that change was never actually measured. The pH drop is merely a modelled conjecture² that is, unfortunately, constantly repeated as fact. The concept of pH was first introduced by in 1909 and the pH concept was not modernized in Chemistry until the 1920s. Citrus growers later developed field instruments to measure pH in the 1930s.

U.S. Heat Waves

Heat Waves are Not Increasing

Claims of increased U.S. heat wave frequency and length are often misleading because they ignore the worst heat waves the U.S. ever experienced in the 1930s, even though records are publicly available. According to the best state-of-the-art temperature data available, there has been no sustained increase in maximum temperatures in the United States since 2005.

U.S. Temperatures are rising dramatically

There are No Real Warming Trends in the US

There has been no significant warming in the United States since at least 2005.  Any claimed recent warming and impacts at specific places in the United States are isolated and indicate random variation rather than long-term warming.

We Need to Limit Global Warming to 1.5 Degrees C°

These Temperatures Are Not Abnormal or Dangerous

Climate alarmists (and the IPCC) say we need to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial times to avoid disastrous consequences, but data show we have already reached such temperatures. European temperature data show temperatures began rising about the year 1890. Note that this was before the large modern rise in CO2 emissions, and as shown by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, catastrophic predictions of extreme climate change have not come true.

Great Lakes Water Levels are falling due to Climate Change

The Great Lakes are Doing Fine

The Great Lakes are currently benefiting from record-high water levels just a few years after alarmists claimed global warming causes low water levels. In fact, water levels have been above normal since 2014.

Alarmists will likely now try to claim global warming causes high water levels, but they have already claimed global warming causes low water levels. Sound science does not allow activists to flip what they assert is “settled science.”

Drought

Droughts are Not Getting Worse

Currently, The United States is benefiting from fewer and less extreme drought events as the climate modestly warms.  In fact, in 2017 and 2019, the United States registered its smallest percentage of land area experiencing drought in recorded history. The United States is undergoing its longest period in recorded history with fewer than 40 percent of the country experiencing “very dry” conditions.  And even the U.N. IPCC reports with “high confidence” that precipitation has increased over mid-latitude land areas of the Northern Hemisphere (including the United States) during the past 70 years, while IPCC has “low confidence” about any negative trends globally.

Is The US surface Temperature Record a Reliable Indicator of Warming?

Too Many Stations are Compromised and Not Maintained

A study in 2009 showed that almost 90% of weather stations used to measure climate in the USA have been compromised by urbanization effects. Some stations were in pristine rural condition years ago when first established, but now have become surrounded by asphalt, concrete, and builds which act as heat sinks, and energy sources such as air conditioner exhausts which raise local temperatures at night.  Another 2015 study¹ showed that almost half of the climate warming trend in the USA disappears if data from stations that have not been compromised is used.

Measuring the Earth’s Global Average Temperature is a Scientific and Objective Process

Surface Temperature Records are Distorted

Broad areas of the world don’t have any temperature measurements being made, now or in the past. To get a global temperature average, scientists interpolate data from surrounding areas that have data.  When such interpolation is done, the measured global temperature increases.

Greenland Ice Melting Will Cause Dangerous Sea Level Rise

The Amount of Melting Ice Isn’t Significant

Climate activists, including government bureaucrats, claim the Greenland ice sheet is melting six times faster than it was 30 years ago. Thirty years ago, the Greenland ice sheet was barely melting at all. “Six times” almost no ice loss remains almost no ice loss.

Sea-level measurements contradict claims that Greenland ice loss threatens coastal flooding. NASA satellite instruments, with readings dating back to 1993, show global sea level rising at a pace of merely 1.2 inches per decade, which is not significantly different than the typical rate of sea-level rise since the mid-1800s.

Coral Reefs are Dying Because of Climate Change

Coral reefs are thriving around the globe.  Coral has existed continuously for the past 40 million years, surviving temperatures and carbon dioxide levels significantly higher and lower than what is occurring today.  Since the peak of the last glacial maximum 33-26 thousand years ago, global average temperature reached its highest point approximately 7,000 years ago, at least 1 or 2 degrees C higher than today, during which coral reefs thrived.

Sea Level Rise is Accelerating Dramatically

Most of the recent alarmism on sea level rise has been due to climate model projections, which foresee a drastic and accelerating increase in sea level rise in the future.

Ocean tide gauge data shows that the sea level trend has not changed in over 100 years and show no signs of drastic acceleration.  In New York City, sea level has risen only 0.94 feet in 100 years and started well before human carbon dioxide emissions were significant. The trend is unchanged since 1856.  All the perceived acceleration comes from satellite measurements and could be within the range of measurement error.

El Niño

El Niño’s are a natural phenomenon and of little concern

El Niño events in the Pacific Ocean are natural patterns that have been going on for millions of years. It’s true that El Niño events in the 21^st century have had some very strong warming spikes. However, if you remove the effect warming El Niño events in the climate record, the amount of warming since 2000, you find almost half of the global warming in the 21^st century is due to El Niño events.

Tipping Point – 1.5 Degrees Celsius Warming

1.5 degrees is unnoticeable and not a threat

Climate alarmists (and the IPCC) say we need to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial times to avoid disastrous consequences, but data show we have already reached such temperatures.

European temperature data show temperatures began rising about the year 1890. (Note that this was before the large modern rise in CO2 emissions.) As shown by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and many articles such as this, catastrophic predictions of extreme climate change have not come true.

Climate Sensitivity

Climate Sensitivity is Likely Low Enough to be of Little Concern

Predictions of substantial global warming assume high climate sensitivity to a doubling of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. For decades, scientists have debated the effect of climate sensitivity, due to the uncertain nature of climate feedback in various models and estimates vary widely.

Estimates in peer reviewed studies range from 0.8°C warming to almost 6.0°C warming by 2100. Such a large range of uncertainty means climate model temperature projections remain dubious, at best. The best evidence indicates climate sensitivity is at the low end of the range, unlikely to exceed 1.5°C in the 21st century.

Water Levels – Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe Levels Are Fluctuating Normally

Mother nature put a stake in the heart of this short-lived issue. Lake Tahoe has reached the maximum allowable water level during each of the past three years (2017-19), requiring special water releases into the Truckee River. The 2015-16 northern California drought was very brief and followed by three consecutive years of abundant precipitation and maximum allowable Lake Tahoe water levels. Alarmists claiming the 2015-16 drought signalled a “new normal” of drought and low water levels caused by climate change have been embarrassed and proven wrong.

Coal Pollution Can Be Seen Pouring from Power Plant Smokestacks

These photos are pure propaganda, blatantly and deliberately deceiving readers

What do you suppose those black, deadly-looking plumes of “emissions” really are? Condensing steam, that’s what. Just plain water. Plumes of condensing water vapor normally look white and benign, but by artfully choosing a vantage point to the east of the plant, and a time just after sunset, the photographers manage to make the pretty white plumes of harmless steam look black and threatening.

Climate Models have Accurately Predicted 30 Years of Warming

Global Ocean Temperatures are Warming at Only ~50% the Rate of Climate Model Projections

 The 42 years of observations we now have since 1979 (bold black line) shows that warming is occurring much more slowly than the average climate model says it should have.

Urban Heat Islands Do Not Exaggerate Global Warming

 Urban Heat Islands Distort the Temperature Record

The majority of U.S. temperature stations utilized for NOAA and NASA temperature records have been compromised by encroachment of artificial surfaces like concrete, asphalt, buildings, and air conditioner exhausts. This creates a substantial false warming trend that is responsible for almost half of reported U.S. warming. When only pristine temperature stations are used, warming trends are quite minimal.

We are in the ‘Hottest Ever’ Period Due to Climate Change

Earth’s hottest periods occurred before humans existed.

New studies sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution show that Earth experienced much warmer periods in the past than we have today.  In the recent past global mean temperature appears to have risen by as much as 9-14°F (5-8°C) to an average temperature as high as 73°F compared to the 20th century global average of 56.7°F.

One of the most common arguments by climate alarmists is that our current global temperature is the “hottest ever” and humans burning fossil fuels are to blame. But results from a Smithsonian Institution project examining Earth’s average surface temperature over the past 500 million years showed that for most of the time, global temperatures appear to have been too warm for polar ice caps.

Instrumental Temperature Records Demonstrate Man-Made Global Warming

Earth has been emerging from a period known as the Little Ice Age as long as we’ve been measuring temperatures

During the height of the Little Ice Age, it was in general about one degree Celsius colder than at present. The Baltic Sea froze over, as did most of the rivers in Europe. Winters were bitterly cold and prolonged, reducing the growing season by several weeks. These conditions led to widespread crop failure, famine, and in some region’s population decline.

Unprecedented Heat Wave in Pacific Northwest was Driven by Climate Change

A rare heat wave, but cannot be attributed to climate change

This concurrence of a number of factors coming together at one place and time was why the extreme heat occurred, with a very small assist from global warming, which added a few degrees to an already extreme event.
It is important to note that the atmosphere comes up sixes regularly, but not necessarily in the same place.  The atmosphere is churning with all kinds of variability inherent in the physics of the atmosphere (also called natural variability).  

The 130-Degree F Reading in Death Valley Is a World Record

Con: 134 degrees in 1913 is still the official record and there is no reason to change it.

But here’s something the media tends to ignore. July 1913 had several days at or above 128°F. This is simply “business as usual” for Death Valley. In fact, back in 1913, over 100 years of “global warming” ago, Death Valley’s official weather station at Greenland Ranch also hit 130°F or higher three times that July. This was an intense stretch of hot weather from the 5th through the 14th when the high temperature reached 125°F or higher each and every day. In fact, this 10-day stretch still ranks as the hottest stretch ever recorded in Death Valley. The hottest days in this time period occurred from the 9th through the 13th when the high temperature reached at least 129°F with the hottest being on July 10th when the record-breaking 134°F was measured.